ABK: Ahrends Burton Koralek, Architects

Ahrends Burton Koralek – ABK Architects

ABK: Contemporary Architecture Practice London: Design Office News

6 Sep 2017

ABK Building News

Ballymun Boilerhouse Rediscovery Centre, Dublin, Irelandphotograph : Paul TierneyBallymun Boilerhouse Rediscovery Centre Building by ABK
The project gives a new life to Ballymun’s old Boiler House and creates a National Centre of Excellence in Education for Sustainable development. The building previously housed four 35 tonne boilers that provided district heating and hot water to the local public housing scheme realised in the 60’s and subsequently demolished.

18 Feb 2017

Richard Burton Obituary

Richard Burton Obituary by The Guardian

Richard St John Vladimir Burton, architect, born 3 November 1933; died 29 January 2017

Richard Burton, who has died aged 83, was a third of the architectural partnership of Ahrends, Burton & Koralek (ABK), alongside Peter Ahrends and Paul Koralek.

It is not particularly rare that three architects should meet as students and go on to practise together, but most unusual that all three should be involved in design and should remain lifelong friends.

The partnership survived controversy when its competition-winning extension to the National Gallery in London was dubbed a “monstrous carbuncle” by the Prince of Wales in 1984 and cancelled, and it became one of the few architecture practices founded in the early 1960s to span the gulf between the public and private sectors.

ABK – Key Projects

ABK Building News

Roscommon County Council Civic Offices, Connacht, Irelandphotograph : Christian RichtersRoscommon County Council Civic Offices Building by ABK – 13 Jul 2016
The proposed design seeks to work with the existing urban grain of the Town of Roscommon so as to create a coherent vision for the public realm. The project is composed of a series of interlocking volumes, overlaid on the historic remains of a C19th Gaol,

A Civic Precinct – Court Building, Local Area Office & Library, Kilmallock, Ireland
Date built: 2010photograph : Christian RichtersKilmallock Civic Building, Co. Limerick
The 1630m2 project for the town of Kilmallock proposes to reinvigorate the social and cultural life of the town, concentrating a series of key social functions to generate a new Civic Precinct – a District Court for the Department of Justice, a Local Area Office for the Local Authority, and a Branch Library together with public parking (40 spaces) for the village. The project value was €5 million Euro.

Ahrends Burton Koralek – Practice Information

Cummins Engine Factory, Yarm Road, Darlington, England, UK
Date built: 1964-65Design: Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo
Building Grade II*
This is the first independent work of Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo Architects, former associates of architect Eero Saarinen

ABK Architects – Background

Paul Koralek worked with Marcel Breuer in New York. He formed the architecture practice Ahrends Burton and Koralek in 1961. Paul Koralek graduated from the London AA in 1956.

photo : Christian Richters

Ahrends Burton Koralek were the architects of the National Gallery Extension Proposal infamously slated by Prince Charles as a ‘carbuncle’ back in the eighties. The studio lost the project – The National Gallery (off Trafalgar Square, London), went on to be designed by architects Venturi Rauch Brown: